Tempus: oil explorers keen to know when investors will gush over them

Share via

Oil explorers are feeling unloved. The price of oil has remained above $100 a
barrel for most of the past two and a half years, and yesterday it hit $110.
Stock markets are back in fashion and the FTSE 100 is close to an all-time
high.

It’s almost as if the financial crisis had never happened. However,
exploration and production companies, whose share prices took a hammering
when stock markets tanked a few years ago, are still waiting for their
recovery. The sector remains in the doldrums and shares continue to trade at
a discount to the market. No wonder

It is understandable that the construction of an air-polluting,
noise-blighting £22 billion third runway to turn Heathrow into the world’s
pre-eminent superhub caught the eye, but the Davies report into airport
expansion also made another radical suggestion: that — third runway or not —
Heathrow should start acting like the UK hub that it pretends to be